Superpower isn't just for Marvel comics. A few days ago British TV viewers saw the first episode of the documentary series "Incredible Medicine". Journalists found unusual people who are not taken by the cold, snake bites, or lack of oxygen. "Lenta.ru" checked whether there is a scientific explanation for all this.
Poisonous cocktail
Steve Ludwin
California musician Stephen Ludwin loves snake venom. “It's like coffee to me,” says the American. "Gives me a boost of energy." He has 17 snakes at home, and all of them, except for a couple of tree pythons, are deadly poisonous. Ludvin is not embarrassed by this. He has been injecting himself with poison for nearly thirty years.
It all started in childhood, when his father took him to the Miami serpentarium. The director of the institution made antidotes and at the same time injected poison on himself in order to develop immunity from bites. This made an indelible impression on the boy. “He claimed that he was never sick, and in the end he lived to be a hundred years old,” the musician says. "I will remember that forever."
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In 1987, Ludwin moved to London and got a job there in a company selling cobras and rattlesnakes. It was then that he gave himself the first poisonous injection. Since then, it has been injecting, and I have never regretted it. Although he almost died once: in 2008, he mistakenly mixed an overly powerful cocktail of rattlesnake, viper and Central American botrops venoms.
Ludwin believes that the injections help him stay young. He hasn't had the flu in 13 years and at 50 looks like a maximum of 35. “I really believe I've stumbled upon something interesting,” he says.
Unlike Ludwin, scientists at Copenhagen University don't just believe - they know it. Ludwin, or rather, his blood - that's what is really very interesting. Most likely, there is no second person on earth who so persistently pumps his veins with snake venom. Researchers are extremely concerned about its antibodies. It is possible that new promising antidotes will be obtained from them.
At the request of doctors, Ludwin has been carefully documenting the type and amount of injected poison for the third year. He also flies to Copenhagen four times a year to donate blood and bone marrow samples. When scientists have enough biomaterial, they will try to isolate antibodies produced by Ludwin and test their response to various poisons.
The smell of disease
Joy Milne
Once British citizen Joy Milne noticed that her husband began to smell a little differently. She did not attach any importance to this and suspected that something was wrong only many years later, when her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. At a charity that helps those suffering from this ailment, Milne met other people with the same scent, and they were also sick.
But no one felt anything and did not believe in the reality of this smell. In 2012, Milne attended a lecture by neuroscientist Teel Kunat. After waiting for the end, she told him that she was able to smell people with Parkinson's disease even before the diagnosis. The neuroscientist also did not take her words seriously.
But after talking with a colleague, he changed his mind. He tracked down Milne, showed her twelve T-shirts, and asked her to identify what people with Parkinson's were wearing. She easily picked out seven T-shirts with a familiar scent. It made an impression: she was wrong with only one shirt.
And a year later, it turned out that there was no mistake there either: the owner of the seventh T-shirt also had Parkinson's disease. Milne diagnosed her earlier than the doctors. How did she do it?
The researchers found that the strongest smell of the disease is felt not in the armpits, but on the collar. It was assumed that its source is the sebaceous glands. The fact that Parkinson's disease affects the secretion of sebum, doctors learned almost a century ago. The doctors also knew about the alpha-synuclein protein accumulating in the skin of patients, which could cause an odor, but it never occurred to anyone to connect these facts.
Scientists are now trying to turn Milne's unique ability into Parkinson's disease diagnostics technology. If this succeeds, doctors will be able to begin treatment at the earliest stages, when the symptoms of the disease have not yet appeared.
Ice Man
Wim Hof
Photo: Tyrone Siu / Reuters
Dutchman Wim Hof at the age of 17 saw a frozen lake and felt an irresistible desire to plunge into the icy water. He did so, finding that he was not afraid of the cold at all. Forty years have passed since then, but Hof continues to demonstrate an amazing frost resistance.
In 2007, the Dutchman went to the Arctic Circle, took off his shoes and ran barefoot 21 kilometers in snow, the temperature of which was minus 35 degrees. Two years later, in some shorts, he climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Then he decided to repeat his Arctic marathon and ran 42 kilometers in a twenty-degree frost. And in 2011 he spent almost 113 minutes in a tank filled to the brim with ice. The achievement was entered into the Guinness Book of Records.
The Dutchman believes that he was able to develop innate abilities using the Tummo breathing technique, which was invented by Tibetan yogis. Hof's book Becoming an Ice Man is full of esoteric discourse and references to the Bhagavad-gita. “If you can learn to use your mind, anything is possible,” he writes.
Oddly enough, scientists believe that there is some truth in this judgment. Researchers from the University of Nijmegen set up an experiment: they injected a frost-resistant Dutchman with a toxin produced by E. coli. It usually causes flu-like symptoms: fever, chills, headache. In Hof, all this almost did not appear.
Then the experiment was repeated on volunteers. After training in the Hof method, they tolerated the toxin more easily than the control group. The authors of the study are inclined to conclude that breathing exercises proposed by the Dutchman allow to control the body's immune response.
The last oxygen
Freedivers from Germany and Brazil fight for a new world record
In March 2016, freediver Branko Petrovic from Serbia set a world record: he held his breath, dived under the water and spent 10 minutes 14 seconds there. It is difficult for an ordinary person without air to hold out even 30 seconds, but Petrovich is not an ordinary person. He learned to dive and hold his breath from the age of five. At 16, he took up spearfishing and gave up just to become a professional athlete.
Scientists have long wondered how divers manage to go without oxygen for so long. In general terms, the mechanism has been clear for a long time. In cold water, a person's heartbeat slows down, blood vessels narrow, and blood from the extremities is redirected to the brain and heart.
Alas, the energy and oxygen that can be saved in this way will not be enough for ten minutes. During this time, the diver's brain should have received irreparable damage, but this does not happen. Why? The answer to this question is trying to find a professor of physiology from the University of Split, Zheiko Dujic.
He found that with a lack of oxygen, divers experience involuntary spasms of the external intercostal muscles and diaphragm, at first weak and rare, then more and more severe and frequent. This allows the body to get to the rest of the air still left in the lungs.
Dujic hopes there is a way to trigger this defense mechanism in other situations - like a heart attack. It could save the lives of millions of people.